Managing Workforce Biggest Challenge For Pork Sector

Officials with Manitoba Pork have been busy dealing with the fallout from COVID-19.

Andrew Dickson is the organization's general manager.

"The issue here is how to manage the workforce and cope with all the potential for absenteeism, dealing with if people might get sick, having the appropriate distances in the workplace and that sort of thing. The other thing is a number of businesses have altered there business structure and how they deal with people. There's a lot of reorganization of the labour force."

Dickson says keeping Temporary Foreign Workers coming to Canada is extremely important to the pork sector.

"Our sector has always relied on foreign workers and we've been able to make the various programs work and we're very pleased that the federal government is trying to ensure that we have a supply of workers that can come in and do the work."

He notes so far, foreign workers have been able to overcome the scheduling and travel challenges associated with the COVID-19 crisis.